The invention pertains to an unloading method and apparatus for a cable finishing system.
For the finishing of cables two fundamentally different system types are available, which differ in their design and in the way in which the cable is picked up and conveyed. In one type of system the cables, arranged in parallel, are fed to the processing stations, in a direction transverse to their cable lengths, and with the cable ends pointing in opposite directions (German patent document No. 24 40 264). In the other type of system the cables, prior to the finishing operation, are laid out in loops so that the two ends of the cable pass through the individual processing stations, which are arranged in a single row, while the cables are arranged in parallel and side-by-side (U.S. Pat. No. 3,283,398). Today, both types of systems are used side-by-side for various finishing applications. The finishing process can, in most cases, be followed by additional manufacturing steps. The further processing may consist in the attachment of additional installation parts on the cable, the installation of the cable in an appliance or in the packaging of the cable. In doing so, the two ends of the finished cable are normally processed differently.
Unloading from such systems is today handled in a very simple way by an operator. For the cables not to simply drop on the floor upon completion of the finishing operation, the arrangement of a receiving station at the end of the system was previously known. This receiving station consists of hook-shaped bars on which the finished cable drops from the end of the system conveyor. The cables then rest irregularly on the bars and are periodically removed by the operator, straightened out, gathered, bundled and placed on a frame suited for further processing. In finishing systems where the cable ends are being fed parallel and side-by-side through the system, another operation must be performed by the operator, in addition to those described before. The cables drop on the receiving station in the same form in which they are passed through the system. But since the different cable ends require various types of processing, the operator must, prior to the "straightening" operation, perform the operation of "separating the cable ends".
Thus, in the described type of finishing system, unloading requires a great amount of manual labor and expense. At the same time, the number of cables produced per hour on the system depends on the efficiency of the operator. If the system produces more cables than the operator can remove, backup of cables will occur on the end of the system and the cables may become tangled. The prior method can, for these reasons, not be used on systems that possess a considerably higher capacity.